Monthly Archives: December 2018

media news

Time of My Life, Part 7: Chasing the cops

When you’re a young reporter, you occasionally find yourself responding in ways to certain circumstances that surprise you as you grow older.

One day after work in 1978, my wife and I were driving home to southeast Portland from Oregon City, Ore., where I worked as a reporter for the long-departed Enterprise-Courier. We were riding in a borrowed car, a big Ford Galaxy sedan my editor loaned to me while my car was being repaired.

We were heading north on Interstate 205 when suddenly a Clackamas County Sheriff’s Department cruiser sped by with lights flashing and a siren blaring; then a second one zoomed past us; then, believe it, a third cruiser roared by with lights and siren going.

I thought, “Holy crap! Something is going on!” I floored my editor’s Galaxy. The front end of the big ol’ beast rose up and we quickly got up to a speed of about, oh, 85 mph.

My wife plunged into the back seat and began pulling out my camera, notebook and pen.

We got right behind the third sheriff’s cruiser in the line of cars responding to something; we had no clue where we were going or what we would see. As the cars roared through traffic, with us right behind them, we were able to keep pace with the officers as they raced to whatever it was to which they were responding.

We exited the freeway at Damascus, and headed down the highway eastward. Then we got to our destination.

We saw a car overturned on the highway, wheels up. Paramedics were tending to a young man who was lying on the shoulder of the road. I managed to snap several pictures of the scene, took some notes from the police, fire and medical personnel on the scene, then got the details the next morning from the sheriff’s office. The young man recovered from his injury.

I want to share this story here to remind you that young reporters occasionally do things that might appear foolish — such as chasing police cars at high speeds through traffic!

When they do, they often produce stories worth chronicling to the communities they serve.

I have to say that the chase gave my wife and me a serious rush.

International news

Trump doesn’t ‘know’ his key anti-ISIS diplomat? Huh?

Brett McGurk, who I do not know, was appointed by President Obama in 2015. Was supposed to leave in February but he just resigned prior to leaving. Grandstander? The Fake News is making such a big deal this nothing event!

— Donald Trump

Let’s consider this statement for a moment, OK?

It came from the president’s Twitter fingers. He doesn’t “know” the man who has resigned as the administration’s top diplomat who works with forces that seek to destroy the Islamic State.

Brett McGurk quit to protest the manner in which the president announced the planned withdrawal of 2,000 troops from Syria. Trump declared that ISIS is “defeated.” So he’s leaving the fight to, I guess, the Russians and the Turks.

Defense Secretary James Mattis also quit to protest the president’s decision and the manner in which he arrived at it.

But for the president to say — again, via Twitter — that he doesn’t know the man charged with working to destroy the pre-eminent terrorist organization speaks volumes about the president’s astonishing inattention.

Think of it. Donald Trump declares his intention to destroy the Islamic State. He campaigned for the presidency saying he knows “more about ISIS than the generals, believe me.” He said ISIS’s destruction would be among his major foreign policy priorities.

And he doesn’t “know” the guy charged with leading the diplomatic effort in conjunction with our allies?

Astonishing.

Brett McGurk’s resignation is far more than a “nothing event.”

military news

Trump does Mattis a huge favor

Put yourself into James Mattis’ boots for a moment.

You’ve just tendered a resignation letter that scorches the commander in chief’s methods of governing, of managing the nation’s foreign and military policies.

You have told the president of the United States you would stay in your job as defense secretary until Feb. 28.

But the president is so angry with you — with all the attention and love you’re getting from the media and politicians of both parties — that he’s decided to cut you loose early.

You’ll be gone instead by the end of December, just a few days from now.

How do you react to that? If it were me, I would be thrilled to death. Thrilled beyond words. Excited to get my life re-started. Secretary Mattis isn’t married, so he doesn’t have a spouse or children to share his joy, but my guess is that he’s cheering along with his best friends, siblings and other extended family members.

Donald Trump well may have done Mattis the biggest favor he could imagine. He has spared the retired Marine general from the chaos of another two months working within an administration where the cadence is being called by someone who is clueless about how government works. He doesn’t know how to forge and maintain strategic alliances. The commander in chief has no inkling of how his policy pronouncements via Twitter disrupt the normal flow of information.

Mattis brought a retired Marine Corps general’s order and discipline to the president’s inner circle, to his national defense team. He will take it all with him when he departs on New Year’s Day.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump will keep on bumbling his way toward an uncertain future as our head of state.

The newly department secretary of defense will be relieved of the insanity and chaos that now masquerade as presidential governance.

James Mattis is likely smiling broadly.

I know I would be. So would you.

national news, political news

Beto v. Bernie: Let the battle begin

A fascinating struggle is emerging within the Democratic Party between an old warhorse and a rising young political stallion.

It’s the Beto-Bernie brouhaha. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont — who’s actually an independent who caucuses with Senate Democrats — is trying to fend off the surge of support being shown for Beto O’Rourke, the West Texas congressman who came within a whisker of knocking off Sen. Ted Cruz in the 2018 midterm election.

Let me be candid: I am not feeling the “Bern.” Sen. Sanders fought hard for the 2016 Democratic nomination, but fell short. He preached a one-page sermon: too few people have too much wealth and he wants to take some of that wealth away from the rich folks; he calls it “income inequality.”

O’Rourke’s message is good bit more comprehensive. He speaks to an array of progressive issues: immigration reform, education reform, environmental protection, and yes, income inequality.

I’m not convinced either man should run for president in 2020, but if given a choice, I’m going to roll with Beto.

Sanders is trying to undercut Beto’s surge.

As NBC News reports: The main line of attack against O’Rourke is that he isn’t progressive enough — that he’s been too close to Republicans in Congress, too close to corporate donors and not willing enough to use his star power to help fellow Democrats — and it is being pushed almost exclusively by Sanders supporters online and in print.

That is precisely another point that frustrates me about Sanders. He is unwilling to reach across the aisle. O’Rourke, who has served three terms in the House from El Paso, has shown an occasional willingness to work with Republicans rather than fight them every step of the way. We need more, not less, of that kind of governance in Washington.

Nevertheless, the intraparty struggle is likely to be just one of many to occur among Democrats as they struggle for position to battle the Republican Party’s nominee in 2020.

I was going to assert that Donald Trump would be that person. However, given all that has happened in the past two weeks or so . . . I am not quite as certain that the president be the one to take the GOP fight forward.

International news

NORAD’s Santa Tracker still on duty . . . despite the shutdown

This is good news for children around the world.

The Santa Tracker who works for the North American Aerospace Defense Command will be on duty Christmas Eve, despite the partial shuttering of the federal government.

Yep, NORAD will continue to track Santa Claus’ progress as he makes his way south from the North Pole to deliver his gifts to anxious children everywhere.

You have no idea how happy this makes a lot of little ones, even if they don’t quite grasp the circumstances surrounding Santa’s annual worldwide trek this year.

We have a little one in our family who’s expecting Santa Claus to visit in the next little while. Emma, our granddaughter, isn’t up to speed on the government shutdown kerfuffle. It doesn’t matter to us. Her parents won’t tell her; nor will her brothers; you can rest assured that her grandmothers and grandfathers — all four of us — will remain mum on the subject of shutting down the government while we are in her presence.

As National Public Radio reports: Despite gridlock in Washington, more than 1,500 military personnel and volunteers in an air force base in Colorado will be hard at work Christmas Eve, tracking Santa Claus and answering children’s calls.

We can all breathe a little more easily over the next day or so while we await the Jolly Old Man’s arrival. NORAD is on top of the situation.

military news, national news

Angry POTUS gives Mattis an early out

This is the least surprising development in the days since Defense Secretary James Mattis announced his resignation from the Trump administration.

Donald Trump has told the defense boss to hit the road at the end of next week; don’t bother waiting until the end of February.

The president appears to be angered over Mattis’ rebuke of him in his letter of resignation. It’s an unprecedented dismantling of the president’s approach to foreign and defense policy. What’s more, the letter lacks a single word of appreciation for the service Mattis rendered to the president himself, although Mattis does restate his pride in serving the men and women in uniform.

Accordingly, Trump decided to give Mattis an extra push out the door. If you think about it, that is an understandable reaction from the president, given the tone and tenor of the letter that Mattis delivered in announcing his resignation.

It does not diminish or degrade the essence of the concerns that Mattis raised in declaring his intention to depart from his post as defense secretary.

So now the Trump administration will have an acting defense secretary, Patrick Shanahan, to go along with an acting White House chief of staff, an acting Environmental Protection Agency administrator, an acting interior secretary, an acting attorney general and,  um, no ambassador to the United Nations.

This is not a “fine-tuned machine.”

International news

1968: It ended with profound discovery

Those of us of a certain age and older remember 1968.

As we were living through it many of us wondered if we could survive, literally, and wondered if the nation could endure the tumult that tore at its soul.

The year began with that terrible Tet Offensive in Vietnam, where we were fighting a war that killed thousands of American service personnel that year. Two iconic figures, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, died at the hands of assassins. The Democratic Party nominated a presidential candidate while thousands of people rioted in the streets outside.

Then in December of that terrible year, three men launched from Earth toward the moon, produced the image I have posted on this blog. They read from the Book of Genesis while orbiting the moon’s surface.

These men — Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders — reminded us of the fragility of our existence and produced a never-before-seen image of our “good Earth,” as Apollo astronaut mission commander Borman described it in his Christmas message back home.

The Apollo 8 moon mission was more than just a competitive event between the United States and the Soviet Union. President Kennedy in 1961 had declared that we should “send a man to the moon and return him safely to the Earth” before the end of the 1960s. We would accomplish that mission in 1969, beating the Soviets in that race to the moon.

Before that, though, we had to send a space ship to the moon to orbit it and to return. Little could we have foreseen the symbolism embodied in that mission at the end of a terrible, tumultuous year.

It could not have ended more perfectly than it did just before Christmas 1968. It could not have been a more apt remedy to help restore some semblance of hope in the face of the mayhem that gripped the nation and the world.

The mission was, shall we say, one for the ages.

Those three men saw fit to read from the Holy Bible about God’s creation of the universe. The words from Genesis served to remind us that the Almighty was looking after us.

The year began and progressed through storm after storm.It ended with the image flashed around the world for the first time ever of Earth rising in the black sky all by itself.

It is our home. Turmoil and all.

national news

How will POTUS sell his leadership in 2020?

Let’s presume for just a moment or two that Donald J. Trump is going to campaign actively for re-election in 2020.

Yes, I know that is increasingly problematic . . . but humor me.

How does the president seek to sell his “leadership” skills to the American voting public? I ask the question as the nation enters its third federal government shutdown in the less than two years that Trump has been president of the United States of America.

Yep. This great dealmaker, swamp drainer and the man who surrounded himself with the “best people” has presided over three government shutdowns.

What makes this so weird and so unbelievable is that the same political party has controlled both congressional chambers and the White House. Yet they cannot — either on Capitol Hill or the White House — manage to govern effectively enough to prevent the government from shutting down.

How does Trump seek to sell his leadership, therefore, to Americans who he suckered in 2016 into believing he could actually govern?

Good grief! This individual has burned through numerous key White House staffers, at least seven Cabinet officials and assorted other mid- and lower-level functionaries. He has pi**** off allies in Europe, the Western Hemisphere and Asia. He criticized his predecessor for playing too much golf while in office and then laps the field in the number of golf outings he has taken while serving as president.

He kowtows to dictators. He denigrates previous presidents’ leadership skills while praising the leadership of the dictators he admires.

All this while presiding over three government shutdowns less than halfway through his first — and I hope only — term as president.

Is this carnival barker actually going to seek to persuade Americans that he has made America “great again” through this stumbling and bumbling?

I believe he will. I am going to hope for all it’s worth that this individual does not snooker us a second time. You know what they say about “fool me once . . . fool me twice.”

national news

Trump ‘leadership’ takes a huge hit

Donald J. Trump has spared little effort in disparaging the leadership of his immediate presidential predecessors.

He actually has praised dictators such as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un as being “strong leaders” who govern with iron fists while denigrating the leadership of our own president at the time, Barack Obama.

So . . . how did the current president “lead” as it regarded the government shutdown?

He agreed with a Senate deal that he assured leaders he would sign, even though it didn’t contain money for “The Wall” he wants to build along our southern border.

Then right wing blowhards such as Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter blast him for “caving” to Democrats and sensible Republicans; they want the wall built, period! They made their displeasure known to Trump.

The president then caved to them! He reversed course! He took back his pledge to sign the bill. Then he blamed Democrats for failing to achieve a compromise.

Is that how we define leadership? Is that the mark of a strong leader? Is that how a committed statesman governs?

Donald Trump has demonstrated jaw-dropping weakness. In the face of political pressure, he kowtows to a radical right wing radio blabbermouth and a right wing commentator known for her intemperate utterances about anyone with whom she disagrees.

Take a look at how two PBS commentators, liberal columnist Mark Shields and conservative columnist Michael Gerson, characterize the president’s behavior this week:

Oh, and then we have the James Mattis resignation as secretary of defense as well.

Are you frightened yet? If so, you are part of a growing number of Americans.

national news

Presidential libraries seek to establish legacies

I spent some time this week at the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Dallas; it’s the fourth such exhibit I have seen.

I intend to see them all eventually.

However, I have to acknowledge publicly a thought that I harbored privately as I walked through the Bush library/museum. Here goes:

What in the world is the Donald J. Trump library going to look like? How will the eventual former president portray his service? Will he even be able to develop a theme for an exhibit that traditionally is designed to portray some semblance of whatever legacy he leaves behind.

I know that some might view this as a cheap shot, as a stretch, as a way to stick it once more into the president’s eye. However, one’s mind cannot help but go to these places while touring an exhibit that is both somber and joyful simultaneously. The Bush library devotes plenty of text, audio and video to 9/11, the horrendous event that defined George W. Bush’s presidency. It also addresses his work to combat HIV/AIDS, his joyous and boisterous family and the man’s post-presidential work to help with disaster relief and his on-going support for our wounded warriors.

My wife and I have toured the Herbert Hoover library in West Branch, Iowa, the Jimmy Carter Center in Atlanta and the Lyndon Johnson library in Austin. They all speak to the presidents’ signature moments; the Hoover exhibit tells also of the former president’s humanitarian efforts.

What in the world is the Donald Trump library going to salute? What tone will the tributes take? How does this president manage to highlight the nation he serves without calling attention to himself?

That all assumes, of course, that Donald Trump is able to finish his term in office. There is increasing chatter that he, um, might not finish it. He is becoming entangled and enmeshed in growing legal difficulties. Those legal matters only exacerbate the political troubles that are sure to erupt as a consequence.

I am willing to admit to thinking of these things. If only the president of the United States would learn how to govern, learn how to behave the way his office compels him to behave, would understand the solemn responsibility he has assumed.

Donald Trump’s penchant for publicity — especially when it’s negative — makes it impossible for me to avoid thinking these things even when touring a presidential library and museum worthy of its name.